Time to Move Up a Gear
By using a flexible ECM platform to fulfill your case management needs, you can create content-enabled applications on the same framework where you’re managing your key documents and processes. This equips you to instantly connect all your information and critical supporting content, and provide knowledge workers with a complete view—facilitating processes ranging from PCI compliance to customer service tracking to HR onboarding and more.
An ECM solution also provides beneficial built-in functionality, such as security controls, document management capability and workflow automation. And by leveraging one platform to facilitate case handling scenarios across your organization, you increase collaboration while enjoying a lower total cost of ownership.
For some, case management is an excuse to develop even more standalone, custom applications; however, if built using
an ECM solution that is also designed as a rapid application development framework (a solution like OnBase for example), case management becomes an opportunity to optimize and revolutionize your business.
Content Accessibility (Versus Security)
Are you using your own personal devices for work purposes? If you don’t already, then chances are that you will before long. Analyst firm Gartner predicts that half of employers will require employees to use their own devices by 2017.2
From an ECM viewpoint, the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is one of the primary drivers for expansion of the solution and its content beyond the firewall, and for many this is the first foray into unknown territory.
The desire to make corporate content accessible from mobile and tablet devices, and via the cloud is not typically driven by the business, but by the end users. For many years, IT departments have tried to secure their infrastructures and content from external attacks, security breaches and any form of disaster—but now users want to access everything from anywhere.
And this is where the business needs to take a balanced view, weighing the benefits of increased accessibility to content and processes versus the natural desire—and business requirement—to secure data.
All business decisions are a balance of risk versus reward, and this is no different. The benefits of providing greater accessibility includes more effective remote working, enhanced employee satisfaction, increased flexibility via the use of cloud services, collaboration with external suppliers and customers, and the ability to start processes much sooner than waiting for a return to the office.
The risks include the potential for data to be accessed by third parties, increased routes into the corporate network, lost or stolen devices containing business content, and a range of compliance fines and negative PR for mismanagement of corporate data.
As a business, you need to consider the cost of any risk and the likelihood of that risk occurring. You could treat it like a sales forecast and multiply the risk value by the risk likelihood percentage—giving you a risk forecast—and then do the same for the benefits. But that sort of misses the point.
This is almost a question of how you want to run your business. Do you want it to be innovative, dynamic and forward-thinking? Is your organization one that values its staff productivity and their active engagement in the business? Or is your primary concern making sure that you don’t ever get anything wrong or make any mistakes? The choice is yours, but increased accessibility to your content and processes could be the springboard to a real return on investment from your ECM solution.
ECM has the potential to be the engine room of business. It can securely store all of the critical information and content that an organization requires to be successful; it can automate and optimize important business processes; and it can put the right information into the hands of the right people at the right time.
But many ECM deployments are not realizing their full potential—they are only driving their sports car in first gear. Areas such as advanced capture, case management and increased accessibility can move your ECM solution from being a trundling station wagon, capable of storing lots but not doing much with it, to a sports car, speedily delivering content to and from the right people and processes as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The right ECM solution can do much more than many currently do. The only thing stopping you is your own imagination and the desire to make your business more efficient, more automated and more profitable. So for those who are still with me, strap yourselves in—this sports-car is about to move up a gear.
For more than 20 years, Hyland, creator of OnBase, has helped more than 13,000 lifetime customers by providing real-world solutions to everyday business challenges. That dedication is why year after year Hyland realizes double-digit growth and our customers recognize the value of our partnership. Named one of FORTUNE’s 2014 “Best Companies to Work For,” Hyland continues to thrive and develop one of the most flexible and comprehensive enterprise content management (ECM) solutions available. For more information, please visit OnBase.com.
1. “AIIM Industry Watch: Case Management and Smart Process Applications.”
2. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2466615